If you were, you know, living your lives, you've probably missed it, but old fires are burning brightly once again: there's somewhat of a falling-out going on between KDE and GNOME, with Canonical siding squarely with... KDE. The issue seems to revolve around GNOME's lack of collaboration, as explained by KDE's Aaron Seigo.

Juvenile journalism, that's what osnews has become. Only at osnews does an editor attack its readership. It shows the magnitude of your maturity and professionalism and respect for your audience Thom. I remember when osnews used to be populated by constructive debates (Eugenia's time). That's why I hardly contribute anymore.

I think all parties share a blame in this issue. They're all playing politics.

Ubuntu can't spend years developing projects in private, code dump it on GNOME, demand they retain copyright assignments and expect GNOME to agree to all that. It just doesn't work that way. Yes, Ubuntu doesn't get any special privileges. And they need to stop all these __private__ messages. Leave everything in the public (mailing list, bugzilla, forums, etc) where everyone can see it.

KDE can't let their egos come into play when GNOME developers provide constructive criticisms. If GNOME rejects something, ask what can be done to achieve the goal of desktop interoperability. Same goes for GNOME.

GNOME needs to understand that community development is a give and take process. Sometimes you have to compromise to keep the peace. It can't be GNOME's way or the highway. They'll alienate the community. GNOME needs to work on a process that make contributing to GNOME easy and __communicate__ better with its community. The perception that GNOME is an elitist community needs to be addressed by GNOME.